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Time flies. It’s hard to believe it, but it’s been four years since I first took a look at a Linux distribution called UberStudent. Back then it was in its 1.0 release, called “Cicero.” The latest release, “Epicurus,” came out in mid-January, with a version number of 4.1.

There are a lot of Linux distributions out there. What makes this one worth checking out?

As with previous releases, what makes UberStudent unique is its target audience, and the software and little added touches it has as a re…

Email. For many of us, it’s a big part of our daily lives. (Be sure to see Natalie’s post from last week about helpful ways to think about email.) Given that, it’s important to be able to access and process email in ways that work efficiently for us.

Some people only have one email account, and find that a web interface is all that they really need. Others like to use a desktop client so that they have a copy of their email on a hard drive. Still others prefer to use a desktop client because the…

The paperless life: it’s a dream for a lot of us here at ProfHacker, and we’ve certainly covered a fair number of paperless strategies for various aspects of academic life in this space before.

I’m not convinced a fully paperless life is possible; somehow, the stuff still keeps landing on my desk and in my mailbox (yes, I do still have mailboxes that collect paper mail, both at home and at work). I try, though, (a) not to generate paper and (b) to be sure that paper that comes my way doesn’t sta…

It’s what most of us spend a lot of time doing, whether it’s our students’ or colleagues’ work, books that we’re teaching in class, or books for leisure reading.

We don’t necessarily talk much about what we’re reading, though — at least, I don’t — which is unfortunate, I think. I’ve been the lucky recipient of some good reading recommendations in the past when others have shared what they were reading, and those recommendations have often been for books I might not have discove…

Early this afternoon (November 6), for instance, I was looking at the wiki that we use for scheduling our posts, trying to figure out my posting schedule for the next few weeks. I was also wondering whether I’d be able to post something for the week of November 10. We try to have our posts in by midnight on Thursday of the week before the post runs, and I was, quite frankly, drawing a blank on post ideas.

I hate being tethered to the podium computer in my classroom. Seriously. I have a strong preference for being able to move about the room, but I also frequently need to use the projector, which is connected to — you guessed it — the podium in the front of the room. There’s really no simple way around this.

In my ideal world, I’d be teaching in a classroom equipped with a wireless projector. But since I don’t anticipate having access to such a projector anytime soon, I’ve had to look for other s…

(Yes, we’ve mentioned that app a few times in this space. I also use Evernote for storing information I might want to retrieve later; I recently reorganized my notebooks and notes after reading about Michael Hyatt’s setup, and I’ve found that approach really helpful).

But as more of us experiment with blogging assignments and electronic portfolios, we often find ourselves asking students to do things with tools that they may not be familiar with. They’ll need some instruction in how to use those tools, and they’re likely to appreciate some reference material, even if we devote some class time to hands-on practice.

By now, most of us are at least a week — if not two or three — into the new academic year. If we’re experimenting with anything new in our courses, by this point we might have at least an initial sense of whether the change is having the effect we’d hoped.

So let’s hear from you: Are you doing anything new in your classes this term? If so, what, why, and how’s it working out thus far?

Since ProfHacker first launched (can it really be five years ago?), we’ve written numerous posts referencing Google Docs. One of my own earliest posts dealt with using Google Docs in my writing course when portfolio readers might still need paper copies of students’ work, and Ryan’s written about using it to run a peer-review writing workshop.

Google Docs remains an excellent tool for working with students on their writing skills, and in late June, Google added a new feature that makes it even m…

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Amy Cavender is a member of the Congregation of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, and Associate Professor of Political Science and interim Director of the Center for Academic Innovation at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, Indiana.